The Art & Business of High-End Retouching

Retouching Workflow: Frequency Separation Continued

The Art & Business of High-End Retouching

Lesson 20 of 32

Retouching Workflow: Frequency Separation Continued

Lesson Info

Retouching Workflow: Frequency Separation Continued

Question from thomas do you ever use the inverted high pass method instead? I don't what invert high passes is typically when you have hi passed layer it sharpens an image are inverted high passes, some bracing her but instead of shopping image it kind of smoothes out um areas that are blocking just like this the reason I don't is it has this very obvious look has a global uniform look that's not controllable in the sensor you can decide where is going to feather out those exact pixels based on the air that you're working on so for that this has taken over that whole thing, so no, I don't right okay let's see what we want to go with next just a quick one from vivi tell if a client wants sixteen bit can you work in a bit and then convert to sixteen that when delivering no, no, no, no that's a bad thing to do and here's why? Because let's say that you work in a bit and the client has given you follow with beautiful grady ints you keep working working, working at the end if you change it ...

to sixteen doesn't mean that the father automatically sixteen bit in the sense of the amount of color that's there in the images they're still going to be gaps as you go forward and what happens is once you converted later you lose all the information that's present so what I recommend is stick to sixteen bid if the client wants sixteen bed it's it's not a good here to cheer him on and switch to sixteen bit later great just a quick request could you from camera guy and also gunma can you show us the color layer you just worked on with the other layers turned off yeah that'd be great actually that would be a lot of fun let's see here uh I'll put a solid claire here and you can see his beautiful little creature oh my god that was not beautiful but beautiful a sense we can see the strokes right it's very makeup like you see makeup charts looks that way so if you want to be very touched your take makeup classes and I realized that I suck at applying makeup because it is still very difficult to understand those principles even though you're good rita and so I really do recommend as a photographer just to get a better sense of understanding different trades recommend trying makeup because it's very similar to this process or its artistic and the better you are that the better you're able to contour faces and things that nature this little mask here is an example of what my frequency is however this also would be an example of how my dodge and burned layers would be so let's actually try and see if we can bring that up well wouldn't because it's going to try and dodge everything below it? So I guess the point is still the same that just back up again to my frequently hide everything else five you can see the strokes like on the nose you see, my brush size was apparent obviously the exact with of the line it didn't changed consistently and by increments like over here, you'll notice that the brush size was much smaller but very similar to what this was over here on the cheek killers it's a wider selection because it covered the air that is trying to remove a replace similarly on the forehead itself is where the highlights uh were the hot spots and so you had more of an application there similar to the chin you can see the hot spot areas of the heirs that we apply more too, and I think makeup is very similar, right? Like you play more to the areas that are more prone to be affected, and I think you kind of want to encompass the same steps when you're working on this process over here. So with that in mind that's kind of a blueprint of what you see afterwards so if your if your little blankly looks so different in mind that's okay it's down to individual preference it doesn't have to look exact with aki is practice and number two it does take time to practice but I do find the law people when they intended for a little while it gets better and better make sense fantastic definitely got more questions already and this is a good point for them love it a big one from your bow and denmark and nikki and miami basically how do you prevent from going too far with frequency separation where do people go wrong with amusing it? What air cem and then great interesting question for rum make sure to pull this out angel wise and for those who haven't untrained eye are there any tools or layers available to be able to see the transitions between the skin color something similar the black and white layer for dodging and burning how do you train your idol toe look for all this ok brilliant this is why it's always important to pay attention on set because the transition points are always going to be the areas the shadows tend to fall off on for example over here on image we have the cheek I'm sorry joel let's not the cheek this is just a quick reminder from symbol that you are on the sixteen bit image right now oh yeah we're going to be saving this to give to people who purchased the car that's what makes me get right to the higher download for no reason I don't want to giggle by donald beautiful okay, fantastic. So say you working along your jawline, this's, where I always see a lot of transitions come about or the nose or any areas that have darker ridges or along the makeup and the outsides of the face. So, for example, the top of the hairline, um, see where else? Yeah, I think anywhere where you see prominence and definition is where you want to focus on. There isn't a tool that would in hand stopped, but I would assume that if you you know how brightness or contrast, for example and you increase the contrast range, you tend to see exactly what areas are. Because now you can see this is really a lovely by the way I would not recommend this. But now you can see these areas along over here with the nose prominent and the jaw lines prominent and even this collar bone and even these areas where you see highlights and shadows fall off immediately. This would be kind of like a look into where you'd be able to see where you would like to work on. Because the second you apply contrast, things start to get, um, mohr, not destructive, but you tend to see mor difference within the pixels more contrast between micro transitions, so setting a contrast is for me, good idea but aside from that there's no other tips it's just practise and practise and sitting down and analyzing model's face and seeing where her transitions are in real life when you lighting during the shoot and oh um not getting carried too far this's why flow is really important if you have your flow said really high what's going to happen is that it's very hard easy here cassidy blank layer her brush it's very easy to get carried away because what happens every single time you do a brushstroke it builds to quickly each each stroke is nine eighteen and so forth with my flow sitting at nine what one percent and builds one percent two percent three percent very gentle and that's why? I typically keep it at one percent or two percent when I'm doing the step because it's much harder to get carried away and then the rest is just practice so let's see now I want to continue on and just do quickly touches to any areas that really bothered me. And for the most part I also want to say that my retina screen is typically a lot sharper. There are people see at home or on the screen so if I ever over and compensate for that, keep that in mind that that's not my intention and that's just because I'm looking at a screen that's much more defined essentially which oddly gives me more work because when I worked on same image at home on my bigger screen this still has more pixel density per screen size so what it means is it just everything disappears sharper and pronounced all the details more okay, so I hopefully we'll try and air on the side of not going too far, which is why I'm going to be turning down by a passing on slayer and so what now what we have is something that looks really beautiful in regards of transitions we've adjusted you know, the intensity of our hot spots we've made beautiful transition the face made really clean makeup lines she still looks like herself we haven't adjusted what she looks like but we still made her as beautiful as possible okay? So I'm going to go in for seve and now before I continue on me teacher is any important questions that you guys have or from the audience because now from here we're going to do things like color correction and liquefying trapping things that nature thie biggest one that we didn't really see was contouring pacific there was a question about that excellent so as I mentioned most my country either happening by dodging burned face by essentially going in and either in your bernard dodge layer um country what you like and again the reason I don't contour so much is just because when photographer lights really well I don't need to over compensate what they've already done so well on set I will only contour if it's requested or required through dodging burning either at either the dodging burn step during our lighting, which is where I'd be applicable or at the end if you feel like you may want to undo that so in the extra steps but again with contouring I mostly do by burning shadows and make up and pronouncing highlights through dodging but there's I don't have a particular guidelines set because it's very much like frequency it's going to keep changing the values this based on where you work and it's all based on individual preference unfortunate don't have more of a guideline that other than to follow which you saw on set do you have a question? So I was wondering if the contrary would be more natural if you pick like they already looks kind of contour that she has the color and and do it on low frequency order dutch would be more natural I think probably dodge well here's the thing let's say that you decide to go on your low frequency and you pick a color that's already present let's say you want to come through the nose line over here even more if you think the color on the nose line what will happen is you just fill the nose with the exact same color across the nose and what that means is it's not gonna contour is just going. Fillmore the exact same color contouring is about darkening. So essentially out. Still be burning that area so I can darken everything collectively rather than fill in the whole earth. One specific color, if that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. Excellent. Um, if that's it, I want to see if does anything else, sir, we could go on to the next step. A couple of the requests on I'm trying to get mohr information here. Raymond would love to see how you would fix the right eyebrow. Seems like it's a bit abrupt, like, broken. I don't exactly know what that means, that's. Who? You see anything wrong with the right eyebrow? Probably. He probably means over here actually let me do this before going on this side. Eso her last hour, right inside. Thiss side the other further down here. Iro over here. That little oh, that. Oh, okay. Well, actually, purposely kept going like the wrong section. What? What would you guys are giving up on me? Okay. Great question. Here's. A cool little tip. This what? Typically come in. You're clean folder. Yeah, however. Even if you forget it's fine to do it now you do whenever essentially with my point is these tools can be applied whenever you'd like this is typically standard work for that I do anyway however pretend that I did this in my cleaning step yeah what I'll do is I'll make a blank where I'm going to this is just me thinking out experiencing causing multiple ways of going about this I'm going to select with my clone brush on low flow not too low say twenty percent current and below selected so anything's remember for every step you you wanna sample area here I'm literally gonna take it and copy here it's not nice it's getting done yet okay now essentially I'm taking a little piece of it and I'm going to hit command tea which is transform you'll find it under edit and transform and scale okay we're free transform I should say and what I'm gonna do is rotate this and kind of plug it in just the point where it fills in the library and then maybe I got a mask and then just mask out the bright areas like so and although not completely perfect that would be the way they do it is by piecing things together you could fill in broken edges copy hair here and there I think the same principle is filling the eyebrow the clone brush that makes sense so they I hopefully that answered his question and now, um, was you're good to go. Fantastic. So, again, I want to go and save funny enough actual let's. Just keep this here in my folder. Poopsie. Hey, um, funny enough is as you're perfecting the image now are now is a time that you begin to see things that you want to fix later and that's, okay, because you could always do that and just fix little bits here and there. And I think my intention was not to try to fix everything we're getting just so that in case you know, you're wasting unnecessary time. But it's, fine to go on at the end and say, oh, I found this little piece here and there, and take a couple of minutes to fix up it's much quicker to do that than to fix everything initially.

Class Description

One of the biggest challenges a photographer faces is the amount of time spent on retouching images. Creating a beautiful high-end finished photo requires the right tools and techniques — but the process doesn’t need to dominate your workflow.

Join international retoucher Pratik Naik, owner of Solstice Retouch, as he shares his secrets for creating beautiful photos in less time. You will also learn the business and marketing side of retouching — everything from working with clients to creative branding opportunities.

During a live photo shoot, Pratik works with photographer Felix Kunze, demonstrating how photographers and retouchers can work together to craft a final product that exceeds the expectations of both parties. You’ll learn every single step of the retouching process by watching as Pratik turns Felix’s raw photos into high-quality images.

Whether you’re a photographer who wants to present high-end final images to your clients, or you want to break into the world of retouching, Pratik will provide you with the skills necessary to be the best at your craft.

peter

Really wonderful course, thanks. May I suggest a fantastic idea for maybe those who purchase the course?
It would be extremely useful to be provided with a summary of the content of each video segment, perhaps a 30-60 second video with written 'dot-point' sheet at the end of each segment, to be reviewed at a later time. It just takes too long to replay each video to get the important messages.
The notes provided by Pratik were a step in the right direction but they need more detail of what was presented, including tips and tricks, in each segment.
In this way, once having watched the entire course, you could go back and review the nitty-gritty aspects of each segment quickly and efficiently.
These quick 'summary' clips could make up a separate 15 minute video, recapping in detail the hard-core content of the course, without interruptions from questions. This would be extremely useful and hopefully not take the presenter too long to film. I feel this would be a wonderful 'added value' aspect of buying the course, as it would not be available for for free viewing. It would certainly encourage me to buy more of the available courses.
Keep up the great work at Creative Live! I have stopped my Kelby subscription and just watch you guys now!! Well done!!
Peter Bourne
Australia

Valentina

Pratik has been a revelation and a revolution at the same time, even kinda a benediction because of its huge generosity to show us such an efficient and powerful workflow. His genial approach turns impossible things into possible. What amazed me most, was Pratik ability to see further the shot and take the best of it to reach the perfection. The original photo is still there, very recognizable, but through a precise and meaningful workflow, it becomes eye-catching, high quality, high impact. Pratik is a wonderful person, very genuine, high talented, with a sophisticated sense of the aesthetics and arts. This course changed drastically my way to look at photoshop and at the retouching techniques. Thank you!!

user d3cdf7

I have been a retoucher since 1992 and a commercial photographer and I am amazed at the wealth of information Pratik is teaching us. Love his great sense of humor. Yes, retouching takes me way into the early part of the morning...up to 4 am. I've learned to listen to Books on DVD from the library which help my attitude much better. Several degrees behind me and I know I was meant to make a difference with portrait photography. NO ONE wants reality, especially at elder ages. So I continue to learn to retouch professionally and not use a quick retouch filter which renders a fake look. I may incorporate a light retouching filter, but I find I must always do some manual retouching first, in order to have the appearance look real. Which is the old first rule to retouching itself.
In the film days, I use to make my own texture screens in order to create more beautiful faces. My photographer friends would ask for my help in using them, when they had blurred an important celebrity shot. The texture screen would help spread the dots and give the appearance of your digital noise now. The results were the image looked more focused
Thank you Pratik Naik, for being so generous with your techniques.
I am interested in how to price out retouching jobs, as I have been told I give my retouching away with my photography.
Thanks,,
Jeri Goodwin-Akari
cherished moments photography in walla walla, WA